Ephere releases Ornatrix 3ds Max 9
Ephere has released Ornatrix 3ds Max 9, its latest version of its popular 3ds Max plugin for creating hair, fur and feathers for games and VFX work.
The update adds a new Warp Roots operator to help groom feathers, plus new options for clumping and braiding hair, converting hair strands into meshes, and painting textures onto hair.
A versatile 3ds Max hair plugin for game development and VFX work
First released over a decade ago, Ornatrix Maya is a well-established plugin for creating and grooming hair, fur and feathers on CG characters.
It offers a range of workflows for styling hair, including parametric or brush-based editing, and the option to ‘graft‘ preset grooms to the character’s surface.
The output is compatible with Arnold and standard third-party renderers, including Corona, OctaneRender, Redshift and V-Ray.
The software has been used at a number of leading VFX and games studios including Blur Studio, Pixomondo, Scanline VFX, Blizzard Entertainment and Capcom.
Ornatrix 3ds Max 9: new Warp Roots modifier helps create feather grooms
New features in Ornatrix Maya 5 include the Warp Roots modifier.
It makes it possible to bunch together or spread apart root positions, either by assigning a texture map, or by painting directly onto the character.
Ephere describes it as particularly useful when modeling feathers or sparse fur patterns.
Updates to existing modifiers make it easier to groom hair realistically
There are also updates to several key existing modifiers, including Surface Comb.
It is now possible to draw smooth curves, or ‘curved sinks’, directly onto the surface of a character to control the flow of hairs, with options to direct, repel or attract the hair.
When using the Length modifier to extend hair strands, it is now possible to extend them along curves for a more natural result.
Updated Clump modifier makes it easier to create braids or other complex hairstyles
For creating more complex hairstyles, the Clump modifier gets new clumping manipulators, making it possible to move, scale or rotate clumps at any point along their length.
It is also possible to generate braids procedurally at any point along the length of a clump, as shown in the video above, saving a lot of fiddly manual work.
New options for converting hair strands to hair meshes
There are also a couple of significant changes to the Mesh from Strands modifier, which converts strands of hair into a faster-rendering mesh shape for games and real-time work.
One is the option to mesh groups of hairs into flat or tubular clumps; the other is to generate textures for the mesh procedurally from the original source hair, as shown in the video above.
Paint directly through textures onto hair to apply decals
Other new texturing workflows include the option to use the paint brush to paint through textures onto the hair in the viewport.
It provides a quick way to apply decals and more stylized patterns, as shown in the video above.
Workflow, performance and display improvements
The Merge modifier, for combining multiple sub-grooms into one, gets new options for blending sub-grooms seamlessly, and resolving overlaps, as shown in the video above.
Other workflow improvements include the option to visualize data generated by the Generate Strand Data modifier directly in the viewport.
Performance improvements include updates to Alembic export, and increased GPU processing of hair geometry calculations, for better interactive performance in the viewport.
The visual quality of the viewport display has also been improved, with support for hue variation, more accurate cylindrical shading, and volumetric shadows enabled by default.
Price and system requirements
Ornatrix 3ds Max 9 is compatible with 3ds Max 2018+, running on Windows 10+. A perpetual workstation licence now costs $649; rental now costs $59/month or $504/year.
Read an overview of Ornatrix 3ds Max 9 on the product website
Read a full list of new features in Ornatrix 3ds Max 9 in the online release notes
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